


A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square

by nerddowell



Series: Stories From The Dance Hall [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, angels dining at the Ritz, but hopefully it's alright, no really, this one is weird tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-13 00:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4500999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A pre-war Stucky one shot based on the song 'A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square' by Anne Shelton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square

**Author's Note:**

> Steve is inexplicably in London. Just go with it.

The night is silent, soft as velvet wrapped around Steve's shoulders, as he follows Mayfair streets; jacket hanging from his thin shoulders, absorbed entirely in moonlight and starshine dreams. Birds are singing, soft, melancholic carillons to the breeze, and Steve smiles at them as he pauses to watch the endless stars above him, feeling like a cork in a bowl of water; bobbing around with no direction or purpose, just watching the water refract rainbows and the tumult of the glass sky and its whirling contents far above him. London is so different from Brooklyn; so quiet, so empty, it seems. He hasn't seen a soul on any of his midnight walks since he arrived; instead, he keeps company with the birds and the stars, with their brilliant eyes.

London is where all the world wants to go, he thinks; to hear the cut-glass accents, feel the austere grandeur of the place, all the Georgian townhouses in neat white terraces and sidewalks paved with slabs of rich history, and stars that fall like rain whenever he tilts his face up to the dark night, feels them fall softly on his cheeks, damp and glittering until he is painted silver with their light. The birds string threads of songs between the webbed tree branches, beads of melody that slide one way and the other as they call, and he listens; feels the whole atmosphere wrap him in silken fabric and welcome him to the fold. He is part of London now.

A London girl with red lips and sparkling brown eyes had smiled at him in the Underground station that morning (the station which, incidentally, doubled as his local bomb shelter, should the Germans come screaming overhead in their planes, blazing trails of fire like comets, bleeding gashes of cut darkness, thunder and lightning like the coming of the Norse gods). Stunning, vibrant with colour, cheeks like blossom and a crown of sunlight nestled in her chestnut curls - even so far beneath the paved and cobbled roads of London. She stepped out of the stairwell like an angel, smooth stockinged legs and small heels and blindingly red smile, her eyes like twin stars. Steve had been captured, caught as surely as if she had taken him by the collar and pulled him close; the train arrived, hurried and shrieking on old brakes, and she stepped through its doors and was lost to London whilst Steve stared, dazed.

The stars glow between the iced bare branches of the trees, playing laughing games of hide-and-seek with his eyes as he stands, spellbound, at the bottom of the world. A hand brushes his lower back as someone leans over his shoulder, blue eyes like glacier water smiling at him.

"You're going to get extremely cold standing there like that, you know."

The accent is the same as every Londoner's he's so far heard in this area - polished, speaking of public school education and elocution lessons. Steve is suddenly painfully aware of his own American-ness, blond and brash-accented and dumb in the face of a man like a Siamese cat - aloof, elegantly careless, cool. He looks closer at the man who has drawn him out of his reverie and discovers that there's a familiar gentle cleft in his chin, jaw clean-shaven, hair slicked back with pomade and a lit cigarette dangling between his fingers. He's dressed in a tuxedo and white shirt, as though he's just come from the Ritz - and it's in that  direction that he leads Steve, hand still flat against the small of his back, warm and solid through the thin fabric.

The air around him sparkles loosely, tiny soft lights like clouds of fireflies, like holes punched in the sheets of night cloaking London to let the sunlight in; Steve is enraptured, watching the way the world seems to ebb and flow around him, as though this man - this achingly familiar, foreign man - is the central point of everything in the universe. As though Steve has found genesis incarnate. A beautiful, blue-eyed, dark-haired Englishman in a tuxedo and an aura of galaxies and wonders.

The Ritz is full when they arrive, lights streaming through the windows, full of glowing figures and more winking fireflies. Steve stares, never having experienced something like this before, this sublime, quixotic brilliance, his head swimming as the man turns, eyes settling on Steve's as he smiles under the moon. Its light is like cream, pouring over them, soft and nourishing until Steve believes he could taste it, drink it out of those silver eyes like ambrosia and become a god, enshrined in this night like a dream. The man smiles and waves to some of the figures, and they raise pearly hands in salute; his laugh is a ripple of bells, and he takes Steve's hand to guide him inside.

They are seated at a table, and the man turns his eyes to Steve and asks, in his smooth voice like running water, "Are they too bright for you?"

"Who?" Steve asks, but the man has already answered, waving his hand through the air as the figures rise and seem to melt away, blinding light dimmed to the softer, gentle electric lighting around their single booth, screened from view by a painted canvas. The man smiles at him, always smiling, always beautiful.

"I'm sorry," Steve apologises, hand over his mouth - "my Ma, she'd be so disappointed - haven't even introduced myself. Steve Rogers." He holds out his hand.

The man takes it and shakes, warmth flowing through Steve's body like a stream of sparks, glowing in his veins and flickering in his chest. He gets the strangest sensation of being made of glass, transparent to knowing blue eyes, heart a knot of flames, turning his ribcage into a lantern. He glows brighter than the figures from before, and the man smiles again, seeming pleased.

"I, uh, didn't catch your name?" Steve says politely; the man shakes his head, smile turning rueful.

"Nobody important."

Steve doesn't believe him. How can a man who looks and speaks and feels like an angel not be important? But he acquiesces as the waiter brings them golden, bubbling sweet wine tasting almost like honey. The man watches him drink it slowly, and Steve feels a tug in his chest before looking down and seeing a slim red thread of light loop out from between his ribs, searching in the space between them before winding itself gently - lovingly - around the man's right wrist. Steve's companion's smile dims briefly before he looks up and locks eyes with Steve.

"Time for a change of heart, I think?"

And Steve somehow knows exactly what he means. Would take out his own heart and press it into this man's hand, with all the joy in the world, because somehow, somewhere along in tonight's moonlight escapades, he's fallen in love with a London gentleman's clipped accent and electric eyes. He can hear birdsong like the tolling of  bells in his ears, feel the fluttering of their wings against his cheeks, but his world is narrowed to those two pools of quicksilver, soft and liquid and in constant flux of colour and tone. Steve nods to him, slowly, and watches as the thread thickens, more and more threads joining the first slender bond to form a rope, pulling him further and further forward until they are almost touching. The two men, sitting at a table in an empty Mayfair Ritz, gazing at one another like newborn infants staring at the planets rotating above their cribs.

The sun is beginning to rise, blue and gold, over the London skyline when Steve finally looks away from the man's face, feeling as though he's known him his whole life; as though longer than a first night in London has passed between them, connected by light and surrounded by glimmering figures in a shadowy restaurant. He looks back, and the man is gone; the waiter has disappeared; and only one figure - his mother - is sat at a table nearby, as hale and hearty as Sheve has ever seen her. He swallows hard, sure now that he has dreamed all of this - the night in Mayfair, the beautiful, familiar man, the ambrosial wine at the Ritz - but nevertheless scoots around his own table to sit opposite her, trembling slightly.

"Ma?"

"Steve," she smiles, reaching out to smooth her thumb over his cheekbone. "I've missed you so much, baby."

"Me too, Ma," he mumbles, biting his lip against the tears threatening to spill; this is a cruel dream, to make her touch feel so real - so warm and comforting - against his skin, only to have him awaken and her fly away with the hazy remainders of tonight in his memory. He closes his eyes to prolong the illusion. "What're you doin' here?"

"I had to watch it happen," Sarah tells him, smile gentle. "I had to watch my boy fall in love for the first time, didn't I?"

"But who was he, Ma?"

"He's the boy you've known all your life, darling," his mother says. "You've just never seen the man before. Too long in your dreams, too long inside your own head..." Her voice fades out towards the end of her sentence, hazy figure glowing in front of him until she dissipates like warm mist, a lingering warm brush of fingertips against his cheek, and Steve opens his eyes to find Bucky withdrawing his arm, gazing down at him in concern.

"You alright, Stevie?" His voice has none of the dream man's English clipped vowels and short consonants; none of his careful precision. Bucky's voice is the familiar, warm Brooklyn drawl, a thousand times more welcoming and a hundred more seductive. Steve has loved Bucky's voice for years, and his eyes for longer - perhaps it's now that he's waking from the dream, having the veil of childish infatuation drawn back from his eyes to reveal love, in its purest and truest form, between himself and his best friend. In the form of the twining red thread fluttering out of the sleeve of his nightshirt to wrap around Bucky's wrist.

"I had a hell of a dream, Buck," he murmurs, blinking. For a moment, he watches that red thread - the rope of light, bound between them, shimmering secretively in the milky rising dawn light, and he glances up to see the man from Mayfair's luminous eyes smiling back at him from his best friend's face. _The boy he's known all his life..._

"A dream, huh?"

"Yeah." Bucky is watching him, still smiling - and those eyes. "But maybe," Steve breathes, gently cupping the back of Bucky's neck as he pulls that laughing, smiling mouth towards his, "maybe it was real after all."


End file.
